341

A tagliatelle made from gold that defines the official size of a tagliatelle, at the Palazzo della Mercanzia in Bologna (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 weeks ago by jxk@sh.itjust.works to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Image source: https://facciamoungiroincentro.blogspot.com/2016/07/palazzo-della-mercanzia.html

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 83 points 2 weeks ago

Gold makes for an awful standard due to thermal expansion, but I feel this is more a historical artefact than an actual standard.

[-] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 55 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Right? Didn't they define the kilogram, make identical copies of the standard, sent them to different countries, then after years, reunited them and found they all diverged in mass?

And now they have made a perfect silicon sphere with the same mass as the standard kilogram, then counted all the atoms. So now we know the exact mass in silicon atoms of a kilo.

Let's just define tagliatelle in light nanoseconds and be done with it.

[-] naeap@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago

They counted the atoms?
Didn't they just took the mol mass and calculated it? (Not sure if mol mass is the right term... School chemistry is a long time ago...)
And I don't see how we even should be able to count them.
Would be really interested, if it happened that way, how they did it.